New Frontier » Energy

An Energy Education

Nate — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:47:41 +0000

My energy reading list pictured above. I’m about 40% of the way through it. I feel good that I managed to read all 800+ pages of the IEA World Energy Outlook. Some great books by Vaclav Smil on Energy, Oil, and Energy Transitions. I still need to tackle the two definitive historical books on energy: The Prize and Titan. I just finished Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, which was recommended by Bill Gates at TED, along with Our Choice. Looking forward to tackling Winning the Oil End Game and Reinventing Fire when it comes out from the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Aspen Environmental Forum–Day 3 Notes

Nate — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:49:23 +0000

T.H. Culhane (Solar CITIES)—A very emotional and inspiring talk about design and innovation at the base of the pyramid. He said everyone wants to plan for the poor but that we should let them plan for themselves. He shared incredible stories of windmills, solar panels, and waste recycling in the poorest neighborhoods on the planet. But how often has the US invited a coalition from, say, Kenya to talk to us about how we could improve the US? Social networking is empowering these communities as people share ideas from places like Cairo and Palestine on how to build windmills and use solar energy. The problem with modernity is that it’s a straight line; we use and consume without looking back. He said we need to close the waste loop—in fact, proving it is possible, he lived in apartment producing no waste for an entire year! Moving on to water, he said that we have plenty of water on the planet—it’s just contaminated. He has given upon “pipes and cables.” The rigidity of our cities’ infrastructure is a real problem in the face of the mass migration into cities. He showed a life saver bottle announced at TED. It costs $150, and through the use of a nano membrane, can turn sewer water into fresh water. The filter will clean 6,000 liters at less than .03 cents a liter. Technologies like this will become more and more important as the inadequacies of our infrastructure are revealed.

John Robb (Author, Brave New World)—Robb comes at these questions of getting off the grid from a conflict and warfare perspective. The global economic system is inherently unstable. He talked specifically of four major trends:

1. The world is full of black swans
2. We are heading towards an economic depression (we are full of debt, in a recession, and can no longer depend on a middle-class whose real incomes have fallen over the last 35 years)
3. The nation state as a system of governance is declining (we are losing control of our finances, our media, and our borders). Large countries can’t execute on large infrastructure, and the money is not there for things like a smart grid or new transmission.
4. The trend in warfare is to disrupt large networks and infrastructure. This gives a good return on investment, often as high as $1M to $1. A $2K investment in two attacks in Northern Mexico shut down Just in Time manufacturing, costing an estimated $2.5B in lost revenue. System disruptions in Nigeria cause production to fall 1MBD in 2007 with oil at $147.

We have fragile systems that need to be much more robust. We need to think about smaller scale distributed systems. Using 3D printing on-site to distribute manufacturing is just one example. It will be a system of hubs and spokes and less about the US purchasing solely from China and vice-versa. When media execs tried to plan interactive TV, it failed, but when a ground-up open-source eco-system was developed, we built the Internet. What this means for the future of energy is:

1. Smart micro-grids (add a software layer to the local level)
2. Open-source fuel-switching capabilities
3. Simple, accessible, local-level batteries and energy storage (bury it as heat—it’s the most energy efficient way)

Gal Luft (Institute for the Analysis of Global Security)—In the 60s, people were scared about nuclear yet very few of them took action and built a shelter. The fact is our grid is still very reliable—it works—which leads to a lack of urgency. The fact is we will move toward decentralization only when we feel the pain. People need a sense that the current system does not serve them well before they will act. He noted that the level of a country’s decentralization correlates to that country’s happiness; Denmark, for example, has the highest decentralization of power and is the happiest. He also stressed that we need to understand that decentralized and renewable are separate ideas—a diesel generator is decentralized but not renewable, and a wind farm is centralized but renewable. One does not imply the other. We need to keep this in mind as it relates to food too: local does not imply sustainable.

Michael Ware (Good Energies)—In the 80s, we stopped investing in energy technology, and the rest of the world has become leaders in our place. The EU, for example, is a leader in wind. The Chinese and Japanese are leaders in solar. There requirements for real change are:

1. Economics (high oil prices forcing consumers to pay more and thus change their behavior)
2. Reliability (the grid is horribly reliable—the lights are always on. If reliability were to falter, people would question the status quo.)
3. Commitment (tools like smart meters to help people stay committed to change)

There are companies out there making it happen. The factory that used to produce Polaroid film is now printing solar technology from Kanarka. ICE Energy allows an AC to run off the grid during peak times using basically ice. Home Depot is now teaming up with Southeast Wind
Turbines and 3Tier#LINK to allow consumers to determine their local wind speed.

George Steinmetz (National Geographic photographer)—After college he went on a “real dirtbag safari” around Africa to take pictures of barebreasted women like the ones he saw in National Geographic. He had three rules on his trip: 1. water out of a pipe is ok; 2. eat at the busiest food stand in a city; and 3. never pay for a ride. Other lessons learned—sleep perpendicular to the length of the train on train roofs so you don’t roll off, and go to the bathroom at night unless you want an audience watching how the white guy does it. He has been a photographer at National Geographic for more than 20 years now and has developed a technique for taking aerial pictures from a glider (basically a lawn chair, glider, and 100-pound fan strapped to his back; “don’t lean back—it ruins your entire day”). Planes were too difficult to work with (too fast, too few landing spots, too hard to communicate with pilots). Balloons were victims to the wind. If you take calculated risks, you get spectacular photos. For example, it’s better to fall from 5000 feet than 100 feet as you have more time to figure out a solution and you’re just as dead at 100. Had an “asymmetric” take off in China and was knocked out when he hit a tree. Luckily there was a facial surgeon at the local hospital—$15 for 17 stitches. Suffered cerebral edema (with vomiting and diarrhea) while taking photos in freezing temps in the Andes. “I get scared every time I fly, and that’s probably what keeps me alive.” Some of his work includes the tree people of New Guinea#LINK. They had had no prior contact with anyone until then. Indeed, they attacked the explorers that “discovered” them with arrows designed to kill humans, and some of them actively practiced cannibalism. He has also photographed the largest salt flat in the world in Bolivia; flamingos in the Andes (the base of the Andes is the only place in the world that goes from desert to glacier); the deserts of Saudi Arabia (with a sand sea larger than France; he received permission to enter by negotiating through the first Arab astronaut) and Africa (some of the last remaining undiscovered lands); volcanoes in Libya (he had to smuggle in his glider); the Gobi Desert (there is one remaining monk who still lives in a monastery there); mosques and cities in the Middle East (sometimes resulting in police spotting his glider and waiting for him at his hotel); the introduction of the oryx back into the desert (an oryx can smell rain 100 miles away and live its entire life off the water in its food); Antarctica (technically the worlds largest desert); and watering holes in the Southwest (he spent two weeks in a tent with a infrared beam aimed across the water to detect motion to catch sheep drinking). When he flies over an area, he can see the pattern of energy and water consumption: suburbs center around cars versus the EU around train stations.

Andrew Revkin (Author, Dot Earth Blog, New York Times)—Chronocenturism is the phenomenon where each generation thinks its time is the most important: “Really, this time really is different!” Because this time either a cresting wave of people and appetites will be forced upon us, or we’ll choose the path of reduced consumption ourselves. It is disappointing where we are at politically and in our understanding of the issues. Bush had his cabinet sit through 12 briefings on climate science from people like Jim Hansen in 2001. To date, Obama hasn’t met with any of them. One of the hopes, though, is technology. In fact, the only way to decarbonize a growing world is through technology, and it’s spreading fast. He was recently in Istanbul, and rather than kids saying, “American, American,” they are now saying, “Facebook, Facebook.”

Pamela Ronald (Plant geneticist and author of Tomorrow’s Table)—The US has let the private sector manage all the plant breeding and research, and arguably they’ve done a decent job, but the focus has been on high-value crops like rice and corn. Her work in rice genetics has shown some amazing results. They have produced a rice seed that is drought-tolerant by basically changing just one gene. The new plants are showing yields that are 3x what they previous were. On top of this, UC Davis has led on the intellectual property side, putting the seed in the public domain. It took 500 people and $70M to sequence the first plant genome—next year you’ll be able to do this for $99 in 2-3 minutes.

Melina Shannon-DiPietro (Yale Farms)—What creates the cheap calories? Corn, oil, and subsidies. But these are not inevitabilities, and tastes can change. When kids leave the farm, they say their favorite foods are tomatoes, hot dogs, and peas. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Jerry Glover (The Land Institute)—The great challenge facing us is how to harvest nutrients from food without destroying the environment. We need to think about regional food security—how will each region of the world produce enough food to feed itself? The reality is that the US probably won’t be affected—we have good soil, lots of water, and temperate climates. For the rest of the world, a second green revolution is going to be really tough. We’re asking for increased yields from worse land with a more volatile climate. People hold up Cuba as an example of sustainable agriculture, but the reality is that they import 85% of their food. When talking about these topics, we need an honest and full accounting on the inputs and outputs. One approach is perennial grains, which have many benefits. Naturally 85% of plants are perennials, yet 85% of our food production comes from annuals. Perennials allow for a longer growing season, better capture, and the storage of water and sunlight. They have deeper root systems, which are the regulators and valves of the plant. Annuals are a leaky system that tends to absorb only 10-30% of the water and 50% of the fertilizer of a perennial crop. In essence, perennials can be our “new agricultural hardware.”

Jonathan Foley (Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota)—It’s becoming increasingly irrelevant what discipline you are in. A good analogy is that faculty used to use stairwells within the university (between departments) but now need to use the doors that lead outside the university (to other colleges, the private sector, the government). Foley has turned his focus to food because the gap between where we are today and feeding 9 billion people by midcentury is huge. We’ll see a 30% growth in population and a 200% increase in the demand for food (consumption). We need to double the food supply, and we’re already using 40% of the world’s surface for agriculture. The numbers are scary and the solutions remote because it’s arguably a bigger problem than just climate change. The discussion right now is really polarizing—you are either with the local and organic movement or you’re with Monsanto (big agriculture and purveyor of genetically modified foods). The reality is that 80% of our calories come from eight crops, none of which are organic. Organic food production is 0.6% of the world’s food supply. As for local, from a greenhouse-gas perspective, it’s much more efficient to buy your food at Walmart then to shop local. This is all really disappointing because in terms of returns on investment, agriculture research advances are extremely high as measured against their effect on people and economies.

Aspen Environmental Forum—Day 2 Notes

Nate — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 19:33:09 +0000

Nathan Glasgow (Rocky Mountain Institute)—We consume 15 terawatts of energy today, and this number is expected to increase to 45 terawatts by midcentury. Many people claim we need every bit of energy and every solution out there, but RMI disagrees—we don’t “need all of it”—we just need to be smart and attack the easiest, cheapest problems first (hence RMI’s focus on efficiency). Energy efficiency can be a way to get at new technology. For example, efficiency that optimizes engines and reduces weight paves the way for biofuels and batteries that take cars farther. There is room for natural gas in this equation. We need to focus on outcomes instead of motivations. The question is how you get there, and how do you delink GDP growth from energy growth. RMI’s position is that the private sector needs to lead with support from the government. For example, “feebates,” tax-neutral incentive programs for more efficient vehicles, are a way that both sides can win. For more information, be sure to check out RMI’s forthcoming book titled Reinventing Fire, as well as their previous book Winning the Oil End Game.

Andrew Revkin (Dot Earth, Blog New York Times)—Energy consumption since 1973 is a straight line up and to the right; investing in energy R&D is a constant line. Venture capital will not fill the research and development gap without the government providing a backstop for the riskiest research. Moreover, the investment in energy R&D must be contant and sustained (shock and withdrawl could almost be worse). This isn’t just a US problem—the entire OECD has not invested in energy research and development. Unfortunately, the time to start a seamless energy transition was in the 70s. Now it’s going to be shock therapy—one way or the other, our lifestyles are going to change (either we will choose to reduce, or constraints will force us to). We will have to pay the price of population growth, which was driven by cheap energy. This portends a time of potential turmoil as democracies flourish when energy is cheap but not so much as costs increase.

Richard Heinberg (Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute)—Think in terms of BTUs: the US consumes 100 quadrillion BTUs of the 400 quadrillion BTUs the world produces. Fossil fuels have given us enormous short-term benefits (especially in the US). Energy IS the economy, and it’s really about Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI). To put it in perspective, fossil fuels have a EROEI of 50-100 to 1. The best biofuels are from 2 to 1 or as high as 10 to 1. Wind has an EROI of 18 to 1. We are going to see a constrained energy world where things like air travel will be virtually nonexistent in the coming decades as energy will be used elsewhere in society.

Joel Sartore (National Geographic Photographer)—We’ve never been more disconnected to the outside world. The annual budget the US spends on protecting endangered species is equivalent to one mile of LA freeway. Sartore shoots photos in such a way to connect people with the animals (check out his book Rare). All too often, he has shot the photo of the last animal of a species. He often uses black backdrops or studio shots to purposefully create an anthropomorphic effect. He wants people to identify with the animals, but he also recognizes that most people respond best (and sometimes only) when their own interests are threatened. So we need to focus on economics, specifically to apply economics to biodiversity and the environment. Storytelling matters but less and less so in a world where the media industry is collapsing. The question is how do you get 80,000 people as fired up about endangered animals as they are about the Cornhuskers on a Saturday in Nebraska (where he lives)? As Margaret Meade said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Deep Blue Holes (movie on cave-diving in the Bahamas)—(Wes Skiles was scheduled to speak at the screening but died the previous week in a diving accident. It was haunting to watch the movie and see him onscreen discussing the risks of the diving they were doing.) The “blue holes” in the Bahamas are deep holes in the ocean that contain a blend of fresh and salt water with absolutely no oxygen at the bottom. Often hundreds of feet deep, they hold virtually untouched (because of the lack of oxygen) fossils records. Through exploration of these blue holes, scientists have determined that animals in the Bahamas became extinct due to a change in climate that happened very quickly 800-1000 years ago. This change was driven by dust in the Sahara, amazingly enough. Dust storms in the Sahara, common still today, generate a cloud of iron, and samples taken from the bottom of these caves reveal a layer of iron dust that could have come from nowhere else. The frequency of these dust storms has increased tenfold in the last 50 years.

Robert Draper (National Geographic)—Research is currently being conducted on the “Nature Deficit Disorder,” or the biology of not being outdoors. A 2002 British survey showed that kids can identify cartoon characters better than plants and animals. A Michigan survey revealed that kids spend half as much time outdoors as they did 50 years ago. This is not just a US issue; in China, 5% of kids explore nature. In India, it’s 18%. Depression and obesity rates are higher in children who don’t spend time outside. This is distancing people from nature, and people increasingly fear the outdoors. Parents are afraid to “put their kids at risk” in an outdoor environment. In addition to being scared, we’ve lost a connection to what is indigenous in our environments. For example, Madagascar is educating their kids about lemurs for the first time as lemurs are increasingly viewed as not being special or something for the “Muzingas.” The effect is amplified in minority or poor communities who increasingly view being outdoors as something the wealthy or white do.

Sally Bingham (Episcopal priest)—The urbanization of our society has created a disconnect with nature, and this loss is a deficit disorder. We don’t live on farms anymore and have lost the connection between ourselves and the earth. We forget that the experience of growing, picking, and cooking something can be spiritual. How many of you, while walking on the beach or out in nature, have brought something home with you? We collect these things because they are part of who we are. Each of us has had a spirtual experience in nature as an adult or child. Being alone in nature enhances our creativity and builds self-confidence. She cite an example of an autistic child whose symptoms were far less severe in Aspen than in a busy city. We have a moral obligation to reflect and act on climate change. These changes will effect the poor the worst, which adds to the moral obligation. You can walk the poorest neighborhoods in Rio, and in the wind sills are coffee cans with a little dirt and plants—even people with very little want to grow something. When she started in this position over 10 years ago in San Francisco, she was called a “communist,” but now nearly all denominations have a statement on climate change—in fact, the focus on this issue is actually bringing people back to the church. (For a good book on this, check out E.O. Wilson’s The Creation).

Audrey and Frank Peterman (Founders, Earthwise Productions)—They both grew up interacting with nature. Audrey is from Jamaica and grew up doing homework by the side of a river and playing in the mangroves. Frank’s father was Native American and a doctor, and Frank grew up following him around gathering herbs and medicinal plants in Alabama. During a trip to Belize, Frank and Audrey met a stranger who, upon learning they were from the US, asked them to describe various famous national parks as he had heard of their beauty and grandeur. They had not visited the places about which he inquired and realized just how little of the national parks system they had seen. Following this epiphany, they went on a 12,000-mile trip visitng parks in the US. They have now founded an organization to bring access to the natural parks to minorities in the US. We have over 630 million acres of national public land in the US (BLM, parks, forests)—why doesn’t more of the population interact with it? Especially minorities? In general, we are teaching kids to avoid nature. To quote one of the kids they work with, “I like to play indoors better because that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” One of their great joys is seeing the light go on in a person’s eyes—the connection is instantaneous, they say, because we are hardwired for it. In fact, the unnatural thing is to be disconnected from nature.

Apsen Environmental Forum—Day 1 Notes

Nate — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:44:07 +0000

Dennis Dimick—Sobering talk and images from the editor of National Geographic. We’ve dammed 40% of the world’s rivers already. We are a monocultured man. More people, more money, more things means simply more energy. Fossil fuels are just ancient sunshine—why not use contemporary sunshine?

Sally Bingham (Episcopal priest)—Religion has to believe in science. Fossil fuels quite frankly come from hell. Why don’t we shift resources to those that come from the heavens?

Jan Zalasiewicz (geologist)—Defining a new epoch: the Anthropocene. The current epoch is about 11,000 years old, and thus proposing a new one is a big deal in the geological community. The new era results from the scale of change in four main areas: CO2 in the atmosphere, biological changes (extinctions), the most mixing of species in 4.5 billion years, and the acidification of the oceans.

Jonathan Foley (Director, Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota)—We’re doing this in real time without a script and a net. We’ve cleared 40% of the earth’s land for arable farmland (and that was the good 40%). Energy, food, and water are the three pillars of civilization, and they are all connected—we have to take a holistic approach. He’s worried about things like peak phosphorous and less worried about energy because we can imagine solutions, but thinking about food and water is really scary. Science is an open-source transparent iteration towards the truth. Population growth is a bit of a red herring: in the next 40 years it will rise 30% while energy and food demand will rise 200%.

Jerry Glover (The Land Institute)—10,000 years ago, nearly all plant life was perennials (95% or more). Annual planting is a relatively new concept. It has been powerful, allowing us to increase the production of seeds and fruit (since the plant doesn’t have to grow deeper roots or thicker stalks to survive the full season, its energy goes to fruit or seeds). However, annuals suffer from disease (monoculture means smaller gene pools), they require oil as an input (nitrogen fertilizers are derived from oil), and they lead to loss of soil (shallow root systems versus deep root systems). 60% of the energy inputs on a farm are to produce nitrogen. Fertilizer went from $450 to $850 in 2008 when oil spiked to $150 a barrel. The price of energy IS the price of food—this is why there were food riots in 2008 as energy prices climbed—this is a critical point. By late June in Kansas, there are 10 million acres sitting empty as the wheat has been harvested, it’s hot and dry out, and the soil runs off. Over 70% of the world’s food comes from grains. A perennial crop would allow for grain to be grown on marginal soils and allow communities to reclaim barren land. He showed a perennial plant that had a 12′ root structure. The comparable annual would soak up only 10-30% of the water.

Jack Hidary (Chairmen, Global Solar Center)—Let’s start with some perspective on where we are at on power generation: 49% coal, 7% hydro, 3% renewable (1% wind, 0.3% solar), 19.4% nuclear, 20% natural gas. The world uses 80 million barrels a day of oil; the US uses 20 million of these. Words and positioning matter. We’ve been talking about efficiency for 40 years—since Carter—but where has that gotten us? We have to consider the power and connotation of the words to turn dialogue into action. Some proposed new words and phrases for talking about these issues:

Old term -> New term

Efficiency -> Savings
Home Audit -> Home Savings Report
Decoupling -> Consumer Choice
Distributed Generation -> Local Power
Green -> Clean
Carbon Emissions -> Carbon Pollution

Alexander Karsner (Chairmen, Manifest Energy)—There is a design flaw in the way our utilities are built. The more we consume, the more they make—that is exactly the wrong incentive structure. We have to create an incentive structure that focuses on nega-watts not mega-watts. Engage the public utility commissions to rethink the structure. We also need to standardize the rules for access just like for the Internet. Anyone should be able to plug into the grid and supply power (locally, not distributed). He gave example in NYC of a building that took 2.5 years to build and 5 years to get a license to provide local power. Focus on what we can get done in the next 36 months without a comprehensive climate bill—tax changes, strengthening/enhancing RFS and RPS standards. He believes CNG in the transportation infrastructure and nonfood-based biofuels are positives.

Questions & Comments—There has to be an open fuel standard (a chip in cars that allows fuel switching). Focus on outcomes, not technologies—tailpipe reductions and pollution, not which biofuel or particular technology is viable. The public would react if they could see a roadmap of where we are going and how we are going to get there. They are concerned we are moving from a strategic liquid (oil) to a strategic mineral (lithium).

The Commodization of Computation

Nate — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:26:05 +0000

In the not too distant future computation will be a commodity. As the Economist outlines the market is developing to buy and sell computation. Amazon has quietly become the leading utility in the space through it’s cloud services. There’s a clear link here between computation and energy. At it’s core computaiton is energy, it’s the pushing of electrons through transistors. As the cost of hardware continues to fall the limiting cost in computation is now energy which is why the large data centers are being built around sustainable energy sources. In the 90s Enron tried to do this with bandwidth, an idea ahead of its time. Today we’re seeing Google become an energy merchant getting approval to buy and sell power a couple weeks ago from FERC. Today we price $s per megawatt, tomorrow $s per teraflop.

IF YOU are tired of hearing the word “cloud” attached to every term in the computing lexicon, you are not alone. Disillusioned tech folks are beginning to succumb to “cloud fatigue”. But the concept of computing as a basic utility delivered over the internet is here to stay. In fact, the industry is already taking the first steps toward turning computing power into a tradable commodity akin to electricity.

It took decades for electrical power to become a tradable commodity. Computing seems to be getting there faster. Standards bodies are working on rules that would make it easier to move virtual machines around, and a raft of start-ups are making this their business. Zimory’s software ties together corporate data centres so that they work as one. Cloudkick offers tools to manage virtual machines. It is the force behind libcloud, an open-source project that facilitates the development of services spanning different clouds. And RightScale is a pioneer in “cloud broking”, meaning that it helps customers switch between clouds or use several different ones so they do not have to keep all their eggs in one computing basket.

Yet it is probably Amazon that will be seen as the firm that really launched computing markets. In December it introduced a new pricing option: customers bid for the retail giant’s unused computing capacity and get to run their virtual machines as long as their bid exceeds the minimum price needed to balance supply and demand. As a result, the price jigs up and down all day like those of pork bellies or wholesale power.

Full article here

We have to find a way to leverage existing infrastructure

Nate — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:44:15 +0000

First, scale-up means learning by doing, which takes time in the energy industry. Where energy technology relies on conversion processes — as with next-generation nuclear energy, biofuels or carbon capture and storage (CCS) — historically it has taken three years to build a demonstration plant, one year to start it up and two to five years to overcome setbacks and reach satisfactory operability. So it can take a decade to reach the point where one is confident enough to build the first full-scale commercial plant. It can take another decade to build a dozen.

Leverage existing infrastructure: After reaching materiality, growth curves have historically levelled off (Fig. 1). This is our second law. Unlike consumer goods that may become obsolete in a few years, the capital goods of the energy system have a lifetime of 25–50 years. That means only 2–4% of existing technology needs replacing in a given year. These replacement rates are hard to increase because the economic barrier to replacing old technology is extremely high: industry will only consider early retirement of the existing capital stock if the total cost of the new technology (capital and operating costs) falls below the operating cost of the old.

Put a Price on Carbon Already

Nate — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:50:03 +0000

From the Economist survey:

The credit crisis also revealed a basic problem with the clean-energy business. Fossil fuels are, in terms of the energy they store, remarkably inexpensive to get out of the ground and sell. That makes dirty industrial processes irresistibly cheap—so long as they are not required to cover the costs of the pollution they cause. Companies cannot be expected to abandon them unless they get a clear signal from consumers or governments that it is in their financial interest to do so. And they are not getting such a signal.

More Here

According to Richard Newell, head of America’s Energy Information Administration, a carbon price is around twice as efficient as a renewable portfolio standard (which requires power companies to generate a certain proportion of the power they sell from renewable sources) and about two-and-a-half times as efficient as a renewable-energy subsidy.

According to Dimitri Zenghelis, one of the authors of the Stern Review and a senior adviser to Cisco and the Grantham Research Institute, a $40 carbon price now, doubling by 2050, combined with non-price policies such as appliance standards and R&D support, is needed to hit the 450ppm target.

Thanks to a combination of the recession and a lack of political will, most estimates of the future level of Europe’s carbon price have been revised sharply downwards this year. And if America gets a carbon price, it is unlikely to be high enough to make much difference. According to America’s Environmental Protection Agency, the legislation Congress is now considering would set it at $12 a tonne in 2012, rising to $20 in 2020.

Globally, New Energy Finance reckons that only $24 billion of green-stimulus money will be disbursed this year, with another $58 billion to follow in 2010 and a further $56 billion in 2011. So it looks as though the money will come too late to temper the recession of 2008-09, and may instead fuel another inflationary boom in a couple of years’ time.

More Here

Biochar Applications in the Developing World

Nate — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:39:20 +0000

A great example of using new technologies in the developing world. As I mentioned earlier this week, as we get closer to a carbon bill, there will be a wide application for any process that upgrades soil contents.

The core of re:char’s technology, Jason explained, is a process called pyrolisis, which takes place by heating to biomass like wood or agricultural waste in the absence of oxygen. Pyrolisis separates biomass and turns it into two main bi-products: a liquid fuel called bio-oil and bio char. Bio-oil is the used to run an energy generator and the remaining biochar can be applied back to the ground, enriching the soils and accelerating the process of carbon capture. Other models involving biomass do one of the two, Jason told me, either turning biomass into charcoal which can then be used, to operate cooking stoves or into energy through gasification processes. Jason’s model is different in that energy needs for lighting and cooking can be met through bio-oil, leaving char available to be put back into the ground, producing both environmental benefits (making the process carbon negative) and social benefits in the form of increased agricultural yields.

Rapier: Don’t Weep for the Trees

Nate — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:24:33 +0000

From Robert Rapier at R-Squared:

As explained in the previous essay, my new role involves development of an integrated bioenergy platform. We believe this to be a different way of looking at the problem of turning biomass into energy, and then ultimately supplying that energy to customers. We are not tying ourselves to a specific technology platform; we are using different platforms as suited for specific local needs. We are also as concerned about the sustainability of the biomass as we are the sustainability of the processes we will utilize.

This is a key point—the technology and the approach depend widely on a long list of local parameters. Creating a platform that can adapt to local conditions is the future of biofuels and energy. All the focus to date has been on crops, but more and more people are talking about mass—and therefore trees—as part of the solution.

So why do we like woody biomass? Why not switchgrass? Sugarcane? Crop residues? Various sources of biomass have their strengths and weaknesses. Very high on the list for a sustainable model is to take care of the soil. One of the questions I sometimes pose is “What would the soil condition be after 500 years in a particular service?” If the answer is not approximately as good or better than the present, then it doesn’t meet the sort of criteria that I am looking for (of course taking into consideration that the soil doesn’t have to be utilized for the same purpose for the entire duration).

Trees are different. During the first 10 years or so of their lives, trees can accumulate biomass at the rate of 7-10 bone dry tons per acre per year. You may see some switchgrass yields that are claimed to be that high, but those were almost certainly with fertilizer and plenty of water. But even if the yields were the same, the difference is that you have many harvests of the switchgrass over 10 years to get the same yield as one harvest of trees. Each harvest comes at the cost of energy and labor inputs.

An important point that requires our focus to shift long-term. Rather then harvest annually and manage an annual cashflow, we need to develop projects that are 7 or 10 years out. This kind of thinking helps damper situations like we saw with ethanol.

But there is an even more compelling reason to utilize trees. Unlike most of the short-rotation crops that are frequently discussed as feedstock for fuel production, trees can actually improve the quality and health of the soil.

Depending on the specific trees you use, managed forests can provide fuel while improving soil quality. You could also envision rotating trees with other crops to rebuild fertility.

So do not weep for the trees we will use. The right trees are ideal sources of biomass if they are properly managed. Besides providing fuel, they are going to perform an important function – recycling nutrients from the subsoil to the topsoil. The trees that are cut will be replanted.

Lastly, this can be done in a way that actually upgrades the soil. Something nobody is talking about right now is the value of good compost. Considering that every ton of green material we add to the top of the soil is a ton of carbon, this market is going to be large.

Oil Drum: The Speech Obama Needs to Give

Nate — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:24:27 +0000

From the Oil Drum:

In such a war — a war we are waging against our very life-support systems — we have no hope of winning. Our best hope is to, as quickly as possible, call off the war, regroup, and fundamentally restructure our society around the acceptance of our planet’s finite nature – around limits.

For the foreseeable future, contraction in all things material will be the rule of the day — decreased economic activity, decreased production, decreased consumption, decreased material wealth. This contraction is unavoidable, as it simply follows the advancing depletion of all the material and energy resources that made growth possible in the first place. All the advanced technology in the world cannot and will not revoke the Laws of Thermodynamics and the finite material limits of the Earth.